Multitasking Through the Pain (and Loving It!)

Walking and blogging in the sun.

I'm walking on my treadmill as I type.  And I'm in pain.  Mr. A dropped a heavy bottle of bubble bath on my toe last night and it still hurts!  I'll probably live though.  Plus, I'm distracted by the happiness that is blogging from my treadmill!  Three miles per hour and I'm blogging distraction free!  *No kids allowed in the exercise room when the treadmill is on.*  Now this is multitasking I can get in to!

Normally, I whole heartedly agree with research that says you actually accomplish less when you multitask.  That is completely true for me.  However, I know I'm not alone when I say I'd be content spending my day doing what ever pleased me.  Reality doesn't work that way.  We all have responsibilities and such that prevent us from becoming self-centered slobs, thankfully.  Having said that, the longer I'm a Mom the better I'm getting at squeezing all the me time I can out of every day.  There isn't very much of it, so I try to get the most out of what I have.  Oddly enough, multitasking during my me time DOES make me feel like I have more of it.

I'm pretty good about finding some time every day to do what I like without letting everything I love go to pot, but I keep running into the same problem.  I have too many things I simply like to do!  I could sink into the tub with a good book for hours each day.  I could take the dogs hiking quiet trails, again for hours.  Heck, I like walking so much my girls share a room so I can dedicate another room to my treadmill and Wii Fit.  And then there's the Internet.  I'm an information junkie.  No matter how useless, I love information.  The Internet is like heroin to me.  (Plus, it's my primary means of communication.  Half the time I don't know where my phone is, but I always answer an email.  When I go off line for a while my friends think I've been kidnapped.)   

Enter the treadmill laptop stand!  This little baby lets me cross two likes off my list.  I can get a nice work out AND surf or blog or post the hundreds of pictures I take each week to my photo sharing site.  Now the I still have the problem of wanting to spend the whole day doing it, but hey, at least I get to do two things I love in the same time I used to do one!

Bonus: I leave my laptop on the treadmill when I'm done.  You would be amazed at how much more I accomplish when I'm not stopping by it's usual spot in my kitchen a thousand times a day!  I can still pop in to check my email often enough that no one will think I'm dead, but its so much easier to leave the on line world behind and really live!   

What do you do for yourself every day?  Do you find small tricks to maximize your "you" time?